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Its probably been a good 3-4 years since I've bought/sold gloves like I had been doing for a while. I'm able to play again after some brutal hamstring injuries which has sparked my interest in gloves again. Can someone explain to me what in the heck has happened to what used to be a pretty small group of us and now all of this instagram and youtube stuff? Its like gloves have become Jordan XI's!! When did this become so popular? Also seems like SBF is the forum to for all of this now as well??

I'm also trying to trim down some of my collection so be on the look-out for another post soon as well.

Welcome back, I am kinda new here, but I am more active at SBF. To me, gloves are the bonds to all my kids, all my kids play baseball. I myself never played a single ending, but thru the gloves we exchanged, I can feel the excitement as I am out there with them. End of the game, we clean, condition the gloves, and hope one day, they will pass their gloves to their kids and be doing the exact same thing I am doing with them now. I can't afford to buy them new gloves every year, so I buy pre-own or some time customs from other players that have their names on them. We dont care that much, if its a good glove, its a good glove. Custom or not. I rarely sell any of my gloves, only for those failed to impress me and my kids. then we will let them go. So now we have over 65 gloves and still growing.

solid comparison. when did it happen? maybe 2 years ago-ish? Although I was late to the party. I don't quite understand the evolution of it, but suddenly seems like a ton of people came out of the woodwork with access to what had been hard-to-get stuff (mainly Rawlings and Nike stuff, from what I've seen, i.e. pro dept, etc...). Also, apparently having gold labels applied to your glove is the new thing and people will pay and arm and a leg and more to have someone yank gold labels off a 50th anniversary Rawlings GG and sew them onto a HOH. I mean, they look great, and you gotta at least kind of admire the guy that cornered the market on 50th anniversary GGs, from a business angle. But not quite the same...

To be honest, I recently joined Instagram as well...because its a pretty solid place to get to see a whole lot of awesome gloves. There are some great guys on there, and a lot of them it turns out I already knew from GWF and SBF. But its also full of people that are simply trying to acquire the hottest new thing and flip it for as much of a profit as possible. And a lot of younger players that seem to somehow have unlimited bankroll. It is what it is...not trying to get on it...but a totally different community (if you can even call it that) feel. its not about information, so much as "what can you get, and how much can you get for it". When it comes to knowledge, I've not learned a single thing from Instagram. But that aside, you really do get to see some pretty sweet stuff.

Also will throw out there that Datduke has been one of the great addition to the forum...a throwback to the original "i want to know about baseball gloves" type of guy.

Also will throw out there that Datduke has been one of the great addition to the forum...a throwback to the original "i want to know about baseball gloves" type of guy.

Appreciate the kind words. I myself never sign up for IG as mentioned, you dont learn a thing from it. If I decided to have an IG account and post my collection on it. I will get bombarded with IS THIS OR THAT FS FT type messages. On the other hand, this place and SBF are loaded with old info, and can learn alot from, and there is where I frequent.

I've started to follow some of these guys on IG, but have no interest in posting anything of mine on there, at least for now for the same reasons as DatDuke. I think after this round of unloading, that will be the end of my buying and selling for a while. It was fun in HS and College and I'm sure if IG were around then I'd have been all over that, ha!

This gold label thing though... I couldnt pay someone to take my lightly broken in PP Gold Label PRO209 back in like 2007 to take off my hands!!! It looks cool, but the premim for it is ridiculous. I'm curious too about this endless glove bank account... Where do I sign up?

Fun to be back already and now that I'm playing softball and baseball I have a "good" reason to keep 5-6 gloves in my playing rotation.

Ah, them olden days! I do miss the smaller and tighter community that I had enjoyed interacting with here on the forum many years ago. I use to count on better discussions and lots of comments on our shared interests back then but now I expect a much smaller turnout when a new topic of discussion comes up. After experiencing limited responses to topics that I've participated in over the last few years I haven't been posting as much as I had earlier. I still like to come here for the quality of discussion which can be more knowledgeable and in depth than other places; however, Instagram is growing as a more immediate source for following glove trends. I've started to be more invested there. My account: https://www.instagram.com/carpentertrade/

There are a lot of kids that have Instagram glove accounts and they often ask me to send them a free glove and they will give me a positive review. I HATE that! I've never given a free or discounted glove away in exchange for a positive review. It happens so much that it suggests that there must be several glove brands that are making or accepting these kinds of offers. I know that Rawlings has been giving at least one high school kid with a huge IG glove account free gloves to review.

Another IG trend that I hate is that many glove accounts show a glove for sale and instructs people to DM them an offer without any hint of pricing. They must spend hours of their time going through DMs and fishing for someone who is willing to overpay. Then, if someone DMs a low price on a glove that typically sells for much higher, then the glove account publicly mocks the kid for not knowing the correct price to offer.

Despite some of these things that I don't like on IG, I do like how visual and immediate the flow of glove information is. The discussions aren't as scholarly but they can be creative and fun to follow. It's been encouraging to see how it fosters more people to get into collecting gloves and learn about the different brands out there, like mine!

IG shows what is great about this forum and SBF - structured exchange of information. The need for a picture with a price is such a simple concept that hasn't been picked up on IG. I refuse to play the game of "make me an offer." I spent a significant amount of time tracking down a replacement web that was specifically made for a custom I had recently purchased. The kid who had it literally held it for ransom. No honor or understanding of community. Another example is "PRO200". That's it! It could be 3 different sizes, but that information requires a dm. Love the stream of pics, but hate the lack of knowledge. That's why I'm here for my daily fix. I practically use the Rawlings page daily for questions that pop up in my head - "What's the P for on a HOH glove? Plum or Primo/oxblood?" It's on the page!

The gist... GOTM. Rich kiddos started the trend buying gloves like shoes... and became a trend and away we go. Good and bad in that its cool gloves are getting some love... but bad the hobby seems to have picked up some dark corners and some scammers. Although, a lot of it seems to be directly related to a 15 year old having access to a IG account and they puck up on the hype. The biggest loss in all this seems the vets who know a ton and have a wealth of knowledge have become frustrated with all of this and are now much less forthcoming as often their imput, advice, and thoughts simply gets profitted from with no real appreciation from the source material. Damn shame...

Simple really, instagram brought in a much younger demographic of "glover" (in many cases kids with unlimited access to their parents credit cards). Its cool to have such an easy way to search images, but conversation is lacking.

I agree with pretty much all of this here. IG is great to get an idea for a custom or see what is new out there, but it's such a vomit of "stuff." I will say I think the silver lining is that our forum got pretty bad for a little bit with it being solely a marketplace and mass messages of random offers based on pictures on here ect ect. I think IG picked up the bulk of that, which is a positive.

Now that I am playing again I'll be around more, so hopefully we can get some good stuff going on here again. I've seen some cool stuff on IG- should have some good stuff in the future in the glove pics section or a "I saw it on IG." Ha!

Scott- I cant believe that Rawlings of all companies needs to do that... Unreal! I'm curious how bad of a dent Wilson has put into them recently.

Also will throw out there that Datduke has been one of the great addition to the forum...a throwback to the original "i want to know about baseball gloves" type of guy.

Good dude!He came in fast, hard, and with a vengeance but he is fun.My favorite thing about him- he enjoys a conversation. Even if he hasnt a clue to what an answer is, he makes a guess and explains the thinking and reasoning that goes into it. I love the 98/99 rawlings because there can be some real odd balls as things didnt seem to have a rhyme or reason for a period of time which lead to all sorts of label and stamping combos. No one can ever know for sure what the deal is now that Bob cant/wont weigh in- but its fun to guess and speculate and he seems to feed into that.

Another thing about IG that I'd mentioned in email to Jason is that it drives me NUTS to get DM's from kids cropping screen shots of pics they took from the bay thinking they are all slick asking what its worth and if they can make $$Sometimes, before a deal is done they even post pics on their page to gauge interest. If they get none, they will back out of the deal. Scamming aspect of it is garbage as well.

Funny story... I was once after a certain glove and had been for a while. I saw it popped up on the bay and hit BIN right away. Midway through paying, I got a notification of a DM. I finished paying and went to read and respond... and it happened to be a kid taking a screen shot of the exact glove i'd just bought asking me if he bought this glove if he could make $$. Now, what really got me was it was known I had been adter this particluar glove. I'm 99% sure this kid knew I was after it too and i'd imagine that was the reason he asked b/c i knew about it. Anyway, I told him ya- he prob could have made $$ but I scooped it before I even checked this DM. Man... kid got mad! It blew my mind though that here I want this glove for my collection, this kid knew, and had the balls to ask if he would make $ by buying it just to flip it- and got mad that I picked it up. Skewed logic for sure.

For all the crap though, it wouldnt be fair to leave it at that. I have met a few younger guys who are VERY respectful, nice, and genuinely WANT to learn about gloves and their history. I'll take all the time it takes to answer their questions and talk shop with them. Thats how we learn, and I think its cool that younger guys actually care in a way that benefits their collection- not their PP accounts. Sometimes they fool you asking a bunch of questions about a glove and then drop the 'how much can i sell it for on ebay' but for the most part the kids who enjoy learning and taking about gloves appreciate the time you take to help and are really into it for the right reasons.

Little ray of hope that there can be some future Gloveworks members mixed in with the ignorance and flippers!!

Scott- I cant believe that Rawlings of all companies needs to do that... Unreal! I'm curious how bad of a dent Wilson has put into them recently.

Right!?! I was surprised too. They don't need to do it, but someone in marketing there wants to do it. I think Wilson has been doing much better marketing, using IG, using YouTube, promoting Aso, Glove of the Month, #WilsonWednesday, etc. I respect their marketing game. It's working well for younger kids. My understanding is that they are #1 in sales over Rawlings and they are probably building on that lead. They bought the Louisville Slugger brand in 2015.

Ah thats right, I totally forgot about their acquisition of LS. Notice how they now have a custom bat program too?

Wilson was late to the custom game / builder, but they did it right. Rawlings offerings were too slim for too long and Wilson came in and dominated there. It took Rawlings a little while to sort of match them there too.

I'm new here, but I like it more than IG. IG has some cool dudes, but way too many guys are interested in not working and only into selling gloves (good luck on it being a career) and making a quick buck and many are younger guys. Sorry that some of these guys make the ok young guys look bad but that's the reality of IG.

When I was 16 I only had my one gamer/practice/everyday glove. It was all that I needed. I would never imagine owning a dozen gloves or more in my teens or even now. I just own what I need. I have a career, I don't need to flip gloves for a few bucks. I am more interested in made in japan gloves and stuff you don't see everyday. Rawlings TT2 and the zims and bryants are way too common on IG and the same goes for the wilson dp15. There's really too many of them floating around.

My biggest beef about IG is how I really dislike how people misrepresent gloves on IG. Saying a glove is pro issue or pro dept is way too overused and many can't prove it.

Im on IG, I do enjoy a lot of it, but a big part of it is a giant circle jerk of kids selling the same gloves over and over. I really don't get it. Kid buys a glove, posts pictures of it before he even has it in his own hands, how its the best glove ever, and then before he even has it in his possession he's trying to sell it for a mark up, and the glove he bought sat on eBay or another IG'rs account for weeks trying to be sold. Next kid buys it and does the exact same thing. And while I use the term "kid" lets be real, there are plenty of IG'rs with dad or coach in their screen name and they are doing the same crap, so while I wish I could say its regelated to just the youth, its mainly the collectors who dominate a lot of the buying and selling. Took me a while to catch on to some of the antics, but yeah the analogy to shoes, swatches, cabbage patch kids, beanie babies is pretty spot on, to a lot of them its just something there to collect and try and make a profit. Not judging to each their own, but it does cause some confusion/frustration when that mind set is blended with guys looking for the perfect glove or wants to learn and try out different models. A lot of misinformation gets passed along in the name of profit.

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